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After at least four patient deaths, Tennessee doctor indicted on drug charges

Dr. Darrel Rinehart, who treated patients in Columbia until 2017, has been charged with 19 counts of prescribing controlled substances without a legitimate medical purpose, according to a news release from the Department of Justice.

Bonnie Blackburn, whose son Mathew died of an overdose while under Rinehart’s treatment in 2015, said she had hoped the doctor would be criminally charged, but always doubted this day would come.

“Yippee, yee-haw, hallelujah. I hope they put him under the jail,” she said.

Dr. Darrel Rinehart prescribes Adderall to a patient in an undercover video shot in his clinic in Columbia, Tenn., in 2016. Tennessee officials suspended Rinehart's license after he had five patients die from overdoses in less than a year.(Photo: Tennessee Secretary of State public records)

Rinehart is one of 60 medical professionals who were charged as part of a nationwide probe designed to combat the opioid crisis in federal court. Thirty-two of those defendants were charged in Tennessee.

According to the joint investigation, at least five of Rinehart’s patients suffered fatal overdoses that were partially or wholly caused by drugs he prescribed between March 2015 and January 2016, records state. Health officials are also suspicious of two more deaths of patients who were taking Rinehart’s prescriptions, but they were not autopsied because Rinehart told investigators the patients were killed by natural causes.

Six more patients had nonfatal overdoses between 2014 and 2016, according to an expert's review of Rinehart's medical records. One of those patients, to whom Rinehart prescribed at least 11 different drugs, overdosed three times.

Finally, Rinehart was caught on undercover video increasing a patient’s opioid prescription without any examination and adding an Adderall prescription after the patient casually asked for “something to help me focus.”

The Tennessee Board of Medical of Examiners suspended Rinehart's medical license but stopped short of revoking it after the doctor promised to never attempt to practice medicine in Tennessee again. State attorneys had argued for full revocation.

“This is a pattern of negligence and bad practice that extends to anything he tries to do with his license here or anywhere in this country,” Samuel Moore, a government attorney, said while describing Rinehart’s prescriptions to a state licensing board.

“This isn’t medicine. This is something else.”

Brett Kelman is the health care reporter for The Tennessean. He can be reached at 615-259-8287 or at brett.kelman@tennessean.com. Follow him on Twitter at @brettkelman.